The Mann Co Reports
by The Archimedes Complex
Summary: Unable to Die - Identical Opponents - Highly Trained. How is it the 9 individuals working under TF2 became the most dangerous elite of super humans in the world? You may have heard rumours and read theories, but now gentlemen I give you the Mann Co. reports. A series of leaked accounts detailing the many mistakes of Mann Co, and the scars on the lives they left behind.
1. The Respawn

#76062 Report.23

Time: 3.48am

Location: Undisclosed

Class: Top Secret

Source: Y.L.W [No photo attached]

Did you ever wonder why a war was fought with so few men? Did you ever stop to think why they don't die? Sure they respawn, but where did that technology come from? Did the heavens just open one day and decide it was time for life to have a reset button? Of course not. That would have been far too easy.

It should have been a war of hundreds of thousands of men from all over the globe, from combat to logistics, intelligence to medical. I remember them, bright young faces all ready for the biggest payload they'd ever receive. They were all so confident, so ready, all because the word had spread of that little device.

The Respawn. Within moments of hitting zero brain activity, in kicks the physics that jumpstarts reality. Well, not reality, but the space around the reality. It morphs it, reverses the time frame back to a predetermined point before the death and resets. Its like a computer, restarting the hardware doesn't affect the software, it's backed up and re-accessed. Over and over again.

You couldn't begin to imagine to excitement this caused. Every branch of the military wanted it, _needed _it. But it was only issued to Mann Co. personnel, they invented it first and the linguistically complex legalise that the lawyers used stated, 'Finders keepers losers weepers'. The influx of men we got was chaos, in the first week we had a hundred thousand applications to process, after the first month there was over a million. Mann Co. had the capacity to build the world's largest army in less than six months.

The world was their oyster; unfortunately it was a catastrophe masquerading as a damn oyster.

The initial device testing was cleared with the best of each league, covert affairs sent forward their spies, medical sent their doctors, engineers sent the specialists, and so it followed with two by two onto the ark so to speak.

Their devices were fitted. They were killed. They respawned.

It was a success.

We got the go ahead to fit a million more.

They spawned. Their bodies spawned. Only their bodies. Only the hardware.

Somehow, in the midst of all our calculations we didn't take mental capacity into account. The form was shifted through the quantum barrier, but the mind was left behind.

A million soldiers just stood there, glassy eyed and hardly breathing. They didn't move, didn't talk or walk, didn't even blink. We yelled at them, screamed at them, pushed them, punched them, threw them, burned them, shocked them, anything we could think of to try and snap them out of it.

That's the problem with software, it corrupts.

We had a million shells of men. A million living bodies missing a million living minds.

I remember their faces, commanders, officers, technicians, gunners, drivers, even well drillers and bricklayers. We killed them. All of them.

Except for the five. The pilot test successors.

We studied them, examined them, tortured them. We wanted answers; we didn't care how we got them.

We blamed them. Why had they survived and the millions others hadn't? We pinned the whole failure on the false results they gave us, and somehow managed to shift the blame of the murder of a million soldiers onto their shoulders. I wasn't quite sure which act was more cruel.

And when we couldn't do any more to them, then what? On their own they couldn't be trusted, they were fixated on the device as much as any other man... but somehow they made it work. They put it into some poor bastards who didn't even see it coming, I remember reading there was a kid from Brooklyn and an ex-Russian mob gun. They were making their own army with technology and knowledge we couldn't access, they wouldn't have given us the secret if we'd begged. You'd have had more luck getting blood from a stone. But we couldn't kill them, they were immortal! And it was all thanks to us.

There was only one solution.

Mann Co. employed them. Employed them to kill each other. Over and over and over again until... well there is no until... we made sure of that..."


	2. The Opponents

#76021

Time: 7.16pm

Location: Undisclosed

Class: Top Secret

Source: K. F.O.E.S [Codename: Matron]

You have to understand that I was put in a position that I didn't fully comprehend. I blamed the Respawn Successors, I had no idea of the scale of Mann Co's deception. I think if I'd have known [...] No. I can't say I wouldn't have done it. If I did, I'm quite sure I'd go mad. Denial is just about the only thing that keeps me sane any more [...]

It was whilst they had been placed in quarantine, a few years prior to their contract start with Mann Co, just after they'd tried to start their own little 'recruitment' scheme. The government didn't know what to do with them but keeping them under level 3 detention was one of the worst ideas they came up with by a long shot; they placed nine of the worlds most lethal servicemen [...] _undying_ servicemen who had been tortured and blamed for crimes they didn't commit into metal boxes and tried to lock them away from the world [...]

Lets just say they all came very quickly to the conclusion that they had nothing to loose[...]

Every day there was a new escape attempt; every day we lost guards and staff to them. We killed them and they killed us, but the difference was we didn't come back [...]

There are only so many lives an organisation is willing to admit to loosing before the truth comes out, and with the Army of the Dead still very much a tender topic of discussion I'm guessing it didn't seem like a wise decision to allow that death toll to rise much higher.

They had to put an end to the unequivocal threat these nine men caused, and that's where we came in[...]

The theory was simple enough; the men were decorated veterans, they had been trained to live for the fight, all that was needed was a target [...]

I read the minutes of that meeting, from what I could tell someone had said it as a joke. 'If only we could get them to fight each other.'

Within a week the proposal landed on my desk for the manpower and equipment of the cloning unit to be placed solely under the Mann Co operative. We were decades away from actually being able to produce fully-fledged human clones, but that was before they dropped the paycheck on us [...] I'll never hold a piece of paper with a dollar sign followed by over ten digits again [...] I never want to [...]

I don't know how they got the DNA samples, the blood samples, the marrow samples [...] it's a gruesome procedure but with that kind of monetary incentive we had very little reason to argue with their means. We employed some of the world's greatest minds to come together and figure out the key to life [...]

It took time. After two hundred and seventy six days of labour, over four thousand minds and an impossible amount of coffee we finally had the formula to replicate an identical life of a living donor. It was a miracle of science on its own, but that was only half of the equation [...]

Steroids helped to boost the growth, but only insofar as their physical forms. Mentally they had to be trained to fit the criteria of each individual, their characteristics, their personalities, their nationalities, everything had to be programmed into them. We joined with the cognitive neuroscientists and got to work, studying the case files of the donors and their experiences in order to produce the most accurate duplicates we could [...]

Everyday they were subject to a variety of tests and scenarios, I'm a little fuzzy on the details of how exactly they managed to convince them of who they were, but what I do know is that they experienced everything their predecessors had. Everything. From their life's loves to their pains [...]

Reading the case file of subject 'Pyro' [...] I was sick. Physically sick. We had to do that to a human being [...] I still can't forget the screams [...]

It was part of my duty to care for them, to monitor their process and provide them with what they needed to thrive. Although they were unaware of my presence as they grew up in that virtual reality, I became attached to them, I was their primary caregiver, they were my responsibility, I stopped knowing each of them by just their names and more by how they reacted to the world [...] it was a mistake, I know that now [...]

But then they were complete. Nine perfect, fully grown replicas of the Respawn Successors [...]

Over the time it took to conceive them, develop, grow and train them, I alone must have put in around 10'000 hours. You can't imagine the terror of the prospect of loosing something that you have worked on consistently for 10'000 hours [...]

The theory followed that only these nine men had been identified as capable of being revived by the respawn, therefore their identical copies would have the same reaction [...]

It was only a theory, but it was all we had to go on [...] Their devices were implanted [...] Then they were killed [...]

Part of me died when they were shot. In a way I assume a parent must feel something similar when their chid dies [...] I should have stopped them [...] Because then they woke up [...]

We'd successfully completed our mission; designing, growing, murdering and condemning innocent humans to an unalterable fate of immortality in order to fix Mann Co.'s mistake. They have to experience death day after day, they live now only to fight themselves, all the time they're fighting for a cause they never really had a choice in [...]

I don't care if there had been a hundred digits on that piece of paper; there isn't enough money in the world to justify what we did.


	3. The Programmer

#80001

Time: 9.05am

Location: Pilgrim Psychiatric Asylum (Crisis Stabilization Unit)

Class: Patient-Doctor Privilege.

Source: Codename – Arthur.

[Interview Conducted By Doctor L, 9.05am, 4/9/1968]

[Dr L]: Good morning Arthur. How are you feeling today?

[A]: It's too bright in here. It's too hot.

[Dr L]: The blinds are closed and it's currently four degrees Celsius in this room.

[A]: You're lying.

[Dr L]: You know I don't lie Arthur. I can only-

[A]: -depict the situation as you see it, I know I know, I've heard all this before Doctor.

[Dr L]: Ah, it's good to see you're on your toes today. Tell me, do you know where you are?

[A]: [Patient sighs] Yes I know where I am.

[Dr L]: and where is that?

[Patient is unresponsive]

[Dr L]: Arthur?

[A]: I'm at K-FOES. Look, I honestly don't have time for this. I'm on a tight schedule.

[Dr L]: Really? What are you doing today?

[A]: We're initialising the final steps of the personality modifiers today; the clones have been prepped for this all week and we only get one shot so please can I-

[Dr L]: - Prepped? Are you sure?

[A]: Yes prepped, I put them under myself. Look Doctor, I really don't have time for this.

[Dr L]: Could you tell me how and why you prepped them? We're considering writing an article about you and your team's work you see.

[A]: Oh ... well in that case I'm sure I can spare five minutes. Well the clones have been in a state of transience as it were, in lay mans terms they're shells, bodies, they're just hardware. But we've prepped them for the software, we have used this week to stabilise them in an environment that minimalizes brain activity, we need to make sure the hardware has enough storage space to fit an entire personality worth of data inside. That way we can start to modify the bodies to fit the experiences, things like scars and nerve responses. This isn't too fast for you is it?

[Dr L]: No no, please continue.

[A]: Good! Well the Matrons and myself have been working together, they're more of a care team but as the Chief Programmer I'm assigned to each individual, and today I've been fortunate enough to be placed on the programming and modification team of... of...

[Dr L]: Arthur, are you all right?

[A]: They didn't tell me we had to do those kinds of things to them... they made me ... they made me...

[Dr L]: Nurse! We will need the sedative soon-

[A]: I read the file. I couldn't breathe. I had to do that to a person... I had to make them think it really happened... Oh my god I did that... I did that to them!

[Dr L]: Nurse, hurry!

[A]: Doctor, I burned them. I burned them for days and days. I burned them until it wasn't even a person any more; it was a thing. It was charred and black, when it moved the skin cracked and tore and bled, every time it moves it cracks and tears again and again until it stops bleeding. Every movement it makes, for the rest of its life, burns it. We had to burn it into a place in its mind where it learned to love the fire. It learned to love the very thing that destroyed its body and incinerated its soul. It screamed. Oh god how it screamed. But then it stopped screaming... and it started laughing... we burned it and destroyed it and it lay there laughing. It wouldn't stop laughing. It won't stop laughing. It won't stop laughing! IT WON'T STOP LAUGHING! MAKE IT STOP! PLEASE! I DID THIS! I'M SORRY! I DID THIS! I DID THI-

[Patient is anaesthetised]

[Dr L]: That's better; we don't want you hurting yourself now Arthur.

[A]: I... I made the Pyro.

[Dr L]: You did Arthur.

[A]: The-The real Pyro, how did it even survive? Its... its sister...

[Dr L]: I think you've given us enough to work with today Arthur. You can rest now. Is there anything we can get to make you comfortable?

[A]: It's too bright, and too hot.

[Dr L]: I promise we'll do something about that.

Interview Notes:

Patient 'Arthur' was found dead six days after this interview was conducted. It was ruled a suicide but the origin of the fire was never discovered.


	4. The 9th Class Equipment

#80132

Time: 16.34

Location: Zurich, District 13 [Underground Base]

Class: 6th & 9th

Source: 6th class

The question I get most is 'Why didn't you design them as a single unit?' and that's when you begin to wonder if the people asking these questions even know what a Spy is at all.

From our division a Spy is the person you call in when all other options are out, they're the aces in the hole for these kinds of military branches; they can be heroes or scapegoats, brash or invisible, dependent entirely on the job in hand. Their key asset is their versatility.

Now, say someone designed the Spytron 3000 and the Invis Watch together as this hypothetical single unit. Say the Spy looses, breaks or has said unit removed from their persons. What do they do then?

They die, because the idiot who designed them didn't think to separate the mechanisms so in the event that one option should be compromised they can revert to a second.

I, however, understand Spy's. I know how they work. I know what they need. So I designed and built these two fine examples of engineering.

Two. Not one.

The Spytron 3000 excels in that sense; with the capacity for over four hundred settings it can scan, calculate and signal a disguise in almost any given situation. Do you want to take a guess at how it works? No? Wow you guys really aren't any fun are you?

Well, here's a quick neuroscience course for you folks. When you recognise an object a cluster of synapses start to fire in your brain and each object imprints its electronic pathways onto these synapses individually, a lot like a fingerprint, no two cluster fires are ever the same.

Now this is where it gets real fancy, The Spytron 3000 doesn't actually disguise the Spy, it's actually sending out a specially designed neural signal to any onlookers, this interferes with the electronic firing of the clusters, effectively changing the way brain interprets what its processing.

The signal mimics a false electrical pattern and alters the input the brain receives, you could be staring right at the Spy but you'd recognise him as someone else entirely. Only downfall is that the onlookers have to have seen the target projection before, so If I tried to assume the identity of my mother it wouldn't work on you because you ain't never seen my mother before. 'Least I would hope...

I remember when we came up with the technology prototype one of our colleagues called in 'mind control', which made me laugh at the time because that is essentially what it is. But I can assure you this ain't no Uri Gellar shit, non of the pseudo-psychology with men guessing the symbols on cards. This isn't a trick of the mind; this is genuine mind control, the technology controls what you see. Hell, how do you know that what you're looking at now is the genuine article? For all you know I could be a woman, or a kid, or Elvis! And that's just it; you'd never know the difference.

The principles of the Invis Watch work the same... in essence.

You see there was always the tricky task of identifying the environment; getting several sets of clusters to misfire – no problem, but making someone see part of an environment they may never have set eyes on before, now that's an entirely different problem. The way we got round it... that's not work I'm proud of. It's primitive to say the least, and I was never one for all that experimental surgery...

Thing is, once you become a Spy it's not a lifestyle you can just slip out of, your reputation as a covert specialist means that as much as you can disappear at a moments notice you will always be a Spy. Its not a role you can pick up whenever you fancy, you either dedicate yourself to the cloak-n-dagger or you leave it well alone. Its why it was so easy to get so many of 'em to agree to the procedure...

Even I didn't agree to it at first, but when Mann Co told us it was an 'all-or –nothing' deal well... I'd spent too much time on the Spytron to have it decommissioned. I was proud of it. I still am.

The Invis Watch though...

We... we had to find a way of projecting the current environment onto the Spy _via _the neural signal. Only way you can make that kind of sure-fire projection is if you have an active image of the environment... you need a camera to constantly relay the current backdrop...

Don't get me wrong, it made sense to install it in a place that the Spy would never be without but... I mean it's in... It's in their heads you know. It's a camera installed in their heads. The procedures fitting those things were grim, the drilling and the cracking nearly made me sick, but I had to install the damn things. We'd come to far to turn back...

All I can say is if I had scars like that I would never take off the damn mask either. Still, I guess that's what we get for signing up to Mann Co.

We get everything.

Everything we deserve.


	5. The Ex Wife

#87012

Time: 04.12

Location: Ayan, Dzhugdzhur Mountain range, Khabarovsk Krai, Russia.

Class: Secret

Source: Specialist Intel [Translated from the original Solon-Tungusic dialect]

When we first met I hated him. Truly hated him. I hated all men at that point, and I had very good reason to. Hating men kept me alive, kept me breathing, kept me living.

He didn't care that I was a woman, and that was important because we were part of an era where the shape of your body determined your usefulness to the USSR. Unless I was cooking, cleaning or making a man happy I was considered worthless.

It was a fate I fought against. Violently.

In September 1941 I was arrested for destruction and arson of 21 houses that were owned by leading members of the Soviet Union. After being interrogated for 76 hours and 48 minutes the decision was made to send me to ITL on the Okhotsk Coast; the Dalstroy Gulag camp. Every one fighting the soviets knew of the Dalstroy camp. They knew the stories, the ones that wouldn't let you sleep at night without seeing the faces of the hundreds who were sent there.

I still see them sometimes.

I arrived there and was placed in a hut with fifty other women and children, everyone tried to keep to themselves, they were mainly the families of those who had defied the ruling politics of our country. Even through the cold nights in the hut and the long days in the factories they had each other. I was alone.

It was what made them single me out.

The guards were cruel men. Bad men.

I still seem them too.

They came to the hut one time and tried to take a woman and her daughters. They were young, too young for the kind of violence I knew too well. So I ran at them, started screaming and punching, doing anything to make them forget the mother and take me instead.

It worked.

The next day we were working in the factory, a man came up to me, the biggest man I had ever seen. He said thank you for helping his mother.

I spat at him.

He punched me.

And that's how we met.

Every time after that, whenever we were working together we would somehow end up fighting. He once broke my ribs and in exchange I shattered his nose.

We never admitted it then, but something in those fights kept us fighting for our sanity. The days in the Gulag were long and the food was scarce, after two months I noticed that he had become thin like all the other men, and that scared me. He had been the biggest man, and then he was just another one of us.

In November 1941 a guard caught me in a restricted area of the Gulag where I had been looking for my secret supply of food. I was... 'beaten', so badly that I could not move for a fortnight. The mother looked after me, she fed me the little food they had and cleaned my wounds. She was a good woman. A very good woman.

In December 1941 I was woken by the mother in the middle of the night and told to get up and run. We had to leave she said, I was to go with her and her children.

We ran outside and I saw the Gulag was burning, men were racing around beating the guards to death with their own weapons, torturing them one by one as the women and children fled.

That's when I saw him standing over the guard who had 'beaten' me near to death. I watched as he broke every single bone in his body as easily as if he was snapping twigs. He was still alive when he picked me up and ran with me out of the Gulag.

We escaped that night. Somehow we survived several weeks through in the wilderness until we came to a small village and were saved. He had carried me the whole time. He had saved me.

He asked me to marry him in 1943.

Our marriage ended in November 1945.

He was a good man, the best man I had ever known, but we had seen too much together.

There are some things that even as a man and a wife we could not discuss. It was these things that drove us apart.

I think about him every day.

I remember every day.

I love him every day.

My name is Sasha Fedchenkov. And the 'Heavy Weapons Expert' you speak of is the bravest man I know.

After all, he married me.


End file.
